


Not on the Cover of No Magazine

by Sassaphrass



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mutants, Alternate Universe- Xmen, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Ian is indestructible, M/M, Mickey Milkovich has Superstrength
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-09
Updated: 2015-07-11
Packaged: 2018-04-03 13:46:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4103152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sassaphrass/pseuds/Sassaphrass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some mutants get powers that can change to world and wage wars. </p>
<p>Most just get some shitty freaky ability that makes everyone around you want to beat you to death. </p>
<p>Being a gay mutant on the Southside sucks pretty bad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Indestructible Ian

Ian Gallagher has two magazines hidden in his room which he's never ever shown anyone.

 

When his brother throws the porno onto his lap in a rage Ian freezes for a moment unsure whether to be relieved or anguished that it's this collection of wank material that his brother has discovered and not the creased and thumbed over copy of “TIME” with Xavier on the cover that he's had hidden under the mattress for two years.

 

On the one hand being gay actually has some tangible effect on how he lives his life. Especially in this neighbourhood. Being gay means he may never get to hold hands with the person he loves on the street by his house, or kiss someone at a public pool. It means if he wants to those things he's probably going to have to move away some day. Out of the Southside to somewhere where people like him can be accepted and proud.

 

Being a mutant is different. It doesn't really change anything in the practical sense. His mutation didn't manifest in a dramatic and powerful moment when he was a teenager. He didn't suddenly send knives flying with his mind or accidentally fall through walls or turn invisible or shoot laser beams out of his eyes like the shiny mutants you see on tv talking about mutant rights. He can actually go days or weeks or months without it being a thing. Actually there was one time he completely forgot about being a mutant for a few weeks and remembered suddenly like a cold shock of icy water as he carelessly cut up chicken one night.

 

But, being a mutant isn't like being gay. Sure they're both things that people generally discover about themselves around puberty (well, Ian's pretty sure he'd always kind of known he was gay but you know _in general_ ), and they were both things it was probably better to keep hidden on the Southside.

 

The only difference was that being gay was, well, it was just liking guys right? There were plenty of gays in the world, hell even in the military now that don't ask, don't tell was gone.

 

But mutants? Well, there were two kinds of mutants: the freaks, pathetic misshapen figures you'd occasionally pass on streetcorners and try and avoid looking at and the bright and shiny heroes you might see occasionally on tv. Nobody in Ian's neighbourhood considered either option to be really _human_.

 

Later that week, when Lip says “Name one time I've ever let you down...” and Ian realizes that Lip's been acting so crazy mostly just because he couldn't stand the idea that Ian had been afraid to tell him something, he's tempted to blurt out his other big secret. Instead he plays it cool, makes a joke about Spikey and Lip's incomprehension about why anal sex is actually hilarious.

 

Deep down he's always known that Lip wouldn't care about his being gay, but being a mutant?

 

Being a mutant isn't like being gay. It's an exclusive, first class one way ticket to being spat on in the street and always having a least one seat empty on all sides if you ride the bus. No one wants to touch you. No one wants to look at you. You're a dangerous animal, a wolf or a rabid dog. Something that maybe can be harnessed, can be _used_ , but which must be used very carefully (Ian's heard rumours that there are gangs in some cities who like to keep a handful of mutants around [it's the only time he's ever heard of mutants being _wanted_ and not just _tolerated_ ]). 

 

Ian knows he's lucky. His mutation isn't something physical (well it is but it doesn't show), and it's not something that he has to control or hide. He's not going to accidentally read someone's mind or crumple a steel bar or shoot lasers out of anywhere lasers aren't meant to shoot out of. It just kind of is there, being weird and abnormal and wrong, even if it could also, theoretically be useful and is (luckily) mostly unnoticeable. 

 

The thing is: he doesn't get hurt. Anymore. At all.

 

Not that he can't feel pain. He can, not as much as a normal person though, but he can't get hurt. It was something it took him a long while to actually put together. He spent a number of months in a haze of confusion before it all clicked together.

 

He'd slammed his finger in the door and though there'd been a sharp stab of pain and a quickly fading ache, but his fingers hadn't broken, hadn't even bruised. He'd grabbed a pot off the stove when he'd caught Carl messing around one day and while there'd been a hot sting of pain he hadn't been burnt. He'd tripped on the step, landed wrong during ROTC, gotten knocked against the wall a time or two and nothing. The usual day to day minor wounds of a rambunctious 12 year old just...stopped.

 

And once that's clicked into place it's more terrifying than realizing his dick not only likes dude but is like, actively repulsed by lady parts, because that's something you can work with. This is wrong this isn't human. Humans hurt, humans bleed.

 

So, Ian tries to cut himself with his swiss army knife but it won't break the skin. He tries something bigger, something sharper, the steak knife from the kitchen.

 

He dulls the edge of it hacking at his arm and not leaving a single mark.

 

He throws it across the room and leans against the sink and cries.

 

Because this means he's not right. Who knows what this could lead too? Some mutations start off harmless enough, even cool and then they get worse and worse until your covered with bone plates or have turned green and scaly or are killing everyone around you by accident.

 

Mutants sometimes kill their families by accident. They sometimes hurt people by accident. They're nuclear bombs, rabid dogs and automatic pistols without safeties all rolled into one.

 

He's lucky though, his mutation doesn't get any worse and in fact doesn't seem to do much of anything. Just kind of sits there, an inert substance, though eventually the pain he feels and the almost injuries fades too. He feels the heat from the red hot heat of the pan left on the stove, the pressure of a door slammed on his foot, the wrongness of a twisted ankle. But no pain. He can't get hurt anymore.

 

It'd be freeing and frankly, pretty awesome if it didn't mean what it meant.

 

Nothing can fucking touch him. Not Frank with his fists, or Fiona with her slaps to the head or Carl with his crazy throwing stars.

 

He hides it and he accepts it. Just like being gay. And he takes two buses uptown and comes home with a copy of “TIME”, with Professor Charles Xavier looking pensive and handsome on the cover declaring Mutants “More than Monsters”, hidden under his jacket. He reads it sometimes late at night with a flashlight or else during the rare quiet moments when Lip and Carl are out and the house is silent.

 

He uses a computer at the Public Library to search about his own mutation. Apparently it's one of the rarer ones. Healing factors are apparently pretty common in mutants but invulnerability itself shows up very rarely, usually is pretty limited and accompanied by something else, something flashier, most commonly in some flavour superstrength but sometimes something else like full-body state-changes or whatever.

 

There's speculation that super strength and invulnerability are like red hair and freckles or red hair and green eyes. If you've got the first one than the odds of you having the second is much higher. Figures that Ian's even a freak amongst freaks.

 

There was a while, a sweet short while where he wondered if Lip's thing wasn't maybe just a little bit of mutation too? But, he had to give that up. Lip's magically unicorn specialness comes from someplace that's human, someplace right. Ian's comes from a twisted wrongness in his DNA. Lip's a genius stud, with a golden ticket out of the neighbourhood to greener pastures. Ian's a gay ginger freak who's only hope of getting out of the neighbourhood is in camo with a gun in his hand and even that is only going to work if Uncle Sam stays in the dark about the gay freak part.

 

(Though technically both gays and mutants are allowed in the military it's still one of those things they'd really you rather not be if you're going to carry a gun and salute).

 

But living in the neighbourhood isn't so bad. At least Ian knows that unless a mugger or a gangbanger (or gay-basher) gets really, really, really inventive there's nothing they can do to him. There's literally no way they can hurt him no matter what they do.

 

So there's that and there's Debbie, and Carl and Liam and Lip. And Fiona's smiles and Lip's smart alec. And when Frank gets in a rage he only ever tries to hit Ian and that's not fun, it's scary and sad, and being invulnerable doesn't mean that Frank can't knock him down or throw him around because Ian's growing and he is strong but he's still skinny and small (but average for his age) and maybe there's a moment there where he forgets that he can't get hurt, but it's okay, because he can't. And Frank doesn't know that and Ian's not about to let him figure it out because this way's better. Better Ian than Carl or Debbie or Liam who would be even more scared and who's little bones can actually break.

 

Better him than Fiona who they need like they need oxygen. And Frank going after him makes her fierce and strong and certain like nothing else. If Frank went after her, if she got hurt, he doesn't know what would happen to them. Because without her it's just a big, terrifying void of the system and being alone.

 

Ian hates being alone.

 

Lip would probably be fine if Frank slapped him around a bit. Might even do him some good, being the smaller one for once, feeling what it's like to be scared of someone you love. But, well, Ian can't get hurt and Lip can. So it's better it's Ian.

 

 

When, of all people, Mickey Milkovich discovers Ian's secrets, both of them, and discovers them both because he shares them. Ian can't help put think that it's proof that there is a god and he has a very finely developed sense of humour.


	2. Mad Mutant Mickey Milkovich

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mickey's story is shorter, because Mickey's never been one for words.

 

Mickey ain't never been no drama queen. Maybe that comes from being fucked for life from the moment yer born.

 

Ya just don't get too caught up in the specifics of how yer fucked. Yer fucked an' it don't matter if ye get fucked up in new ways. That's just life.

 

So, it's dudes that get his dick hard. That don't make Mickey nobodies bitch. Don't make him fuckin' queer. He likes what he likes. An' maybe he's ashamed but he ain't gonna change. Milkoviches don't change for no one. Sure, he ain't gonna parade it around. S'not like he's gotta death wish.

 

He does spend an awful lotta time worryin' bout his dad killin' 'im.

 

Sometimes he wishes he could tear his skin off an' start over.

 

He could o' course. If he wanted to.

 

That's the other thing...

 

When he's 13 years old he kills a man by punching him in the face. And not in that fancy jammin' the nose bone into the brain' way neither. He'd caved the dudes face in and ended up standing in the living room bloody to his wrist with aching knuckles wondering what the hell just happened.

 

In the grand scheme of things being a mutant freak makes little to no difference. S'not actually that useful. Gettin' punched still hurts. Gettin' shot'll still kill him. S'just that sometimes, if he's not careful the wholesale destruction, death and pain that Mickey delivers to the world is more on par with rampaging elephant than with a no good Southside thug.

 

He can knock down walls with a punch (it still fucks up his hand to hit concrete though), but flesh tears easy, bones break like twigs. He don't use it (much). It's just there.

 

The day that Ian Gallagher wakes him up by tapping him with a tire iron it's there.

 

And there's a moment when he's screwing Ian that he grabs the kid's shoulder too hard. _Way_ too hard. Doesn't mean to, but it just happens, and he freezes waiting for the scream, but the kid just freezes too and stares at him.

 

They stay like that for a moment. Probably freakin' hilarious if someone walked in. The pair of the frozen mid-screw starin' at the other like he was a time bomb that might or might not explode.

 

So, turns out that Ian's not just a pansy-ass whitetrash boy, he's a _mutant_ pansy-ass whitetrash boy.

 

What are the odds that there'd be two? Eh?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mickey's got superstrength but isn't indestructible (meaning that if he doesn't watch his own strength he can hurt himself eg: break his arm when he punches a wall etc.)
> 
> Ian is indestructible but doesn't have superstrength or anything. He's just regular. 
> 
> I just thought is was funny how if you had one without the other it kind of makes the power useless. I dunno. Shrugs. Hope you crazies like it?
> 
> *Insert Shameless Begging for Comments Here*


	3. Terrible Terry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Most of the time being a mutant doesn't make much of a difference in Micky and Ian's lives, but sometimes it does. 
> 
> The first time they use their powers with intent. No one is surprised it's against Terry Milkovich. 
> 
> Or: the writer gleefully saves our boys from the events of 3x06 (at least partly)

The first time either of them use their powers for anything other than accidental property damage or (in Mickey's case) totally intentional Grievous Bodily Harm is when Terry comes home early and catches them fucking on the couch.

 

Which, Ian could admit, had been fucking stupid. He might be indestructible but he still needed to eat and people talked. It didn't have to have been Terry, it could have been any of the lowlifes that wandered in and out of the Milkovich place and they'd still have been in trouble.

 

Not as much trouble as Terry but still. Bad.

 

Terry was probably the only person in the world who didn't hesitate before he took a swing at a Milkovich kid.

 

Ian didn't understand it. The Milkoviches didn't take shit from anybody else. _Anybody_. He so much as looked at Mandy funny and her brothers had been ready to bury him in the backyard. But, her own fucking father had knocked her up and none of them had lifted a finger.

 

Ian wasn't worried when Terry took a swing at him. He cut his lip a bit against his own teeth from the force of the blow but c'mon, this was like his one superpower: walking away from a beating unhurt.

 

Mickey must have forgotten that though. When Mickey jumped on his Dad's back it sent a terrible lurch through Ian's stomach. He'd been hoping Terry would tire himself out trying to beat on Ian and keep overlooking Mickey.

 

Mickey pulled his dad off easy, but then Terry got turned around and somehow got room to swing and...

 

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. _Fight back Mickey_. Ian wanted to scream. _Fight back and he can't hurt you_.

 

But Terry'd pistol whipped Mickey a couple times now and Ian got up, and Terry stepped back and pointed the gun at him and...

 

Suddenly all that rage that Ian felt sometimes, all that restless helpless.... _violence-_ had a target.

 

Ian met Terry's gaze and walked towards the gun. Terry unclicked the safety. Mickey was bleeding and bruised and out of it on the couch and Terry had done that. Mandy had been knocked up and Terry had done that too.

 

Ian was so fucking tired of having to try and pick up the pieces that people like Terry left of the people Ian loved.

 

He lunged. Terry shot. Ian is pretty big though, and Terry can't hurt him, not the way Terry hurts everybody else. Ian manages to knock him down but Terry's big too and once he gets over the shock it's only a matter of time before he bucks Ian off.

 

Mickey is still conscious. Barely. Ian can see his eyes moving.

“MICKEY!!!” Ian yells. “MICKEY COME HOLD HIM DOWN!!!”

 

He's not sure what makes Mickey react. What makes him decided to fight but he tries to stand up off the couch and staggers ending up on his knees. He crawls over to where Ian is trying to hold his father down.

 

“Hold him down Mick.” Ian orders in his best ROTC voice as he meets Mickey's slightly unfocused gaze. “You make sure he doesn't get up.”

 

Mickey nods and sits on his dad's back. One foot on each wrist, one hand on his neck, and one holding Mickey's own still bleeding face.

 

Ian backs up and scrambles to his feet. He roots through his clothing for his cellphone.

 

That's when he realizes Mickey is still naked. Ian had grabbed his boxers in the hopes of getting out the door but Mickey was still naked and...swaying a little as he held his father down.

 

Despite that, and Terry's apparently desperate struggles, the Milkovich patriarch hadn't moved an inch. Mickey's strength had him pinned like a butterfly on a board. Ian takes a second to savour the image of Terry as a dead butterfly before he calls 911.

 

Terry's forever on parole, so it was going to be okay. That was the thought running through Ian's head on repeat as talked to the operator and waited for the ambulance and the cops, watching Mickey's gaze sharpen, and Terry struggle.

 

It was going to be okay. Terry was on parole, beating up your kid counted as breaking parole right? It was going to be okay.

 

Only it looked like Mickey had finally caught up with everything that had just happened and what Ian had done. The cardinal Southside rule that Ian had broken, and now he was looking between what he was doing and where Ian was standing with dawing horror and growing anger.

 

Mickey's rages were terrible things to see. Ian was the only thing that seemed to be able to weather them unharmed (including Mickey who often ended up with at least one broken bone from punching or kicking something he shouldn't have by the time his temper ran down).

 

“Terry's on parole. It's going to be okay.” Ian said. He wondered if he'd been repeating it the entire time. That didn't matter. If he had it didn't matter Mickey obviously hadn't been listening.

 

He was just holding his father down and shaking his head.

 

It would be okay though. Ian thought desperately. They were both okay. He couldn't have let Terry kill Mickey, or hurt him anymore.

 

He wonders if maybe they shouldn't both just run as far and as fast as they could before the cops showed. Terry had a gun that was a violation too right? Even if beating your underage son wasn't.

 

It would be okay. Ian had to believe that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fuckin' Ian an' his fucking Care Bear Gallagher ways.

Mickey'd thought they weren't gonna have these sorts of problems from the freakin' ginger. He may be soft but he was fully Southside and no one on the fuckin' Southside called the _cops_. They just didn't.

If Micke'd known that fuckin'a hood boy'd be this shitty he'da gone up to Boystown and fucked some pansy up there and then he wouldn't be holding his fuckin' father down cause the man had tried to beat him to death 'cause he'd found Mickey gettin' fucked by someone on the couch an' they were waiting for the cops to show.

 

The police come an' paramedics and it's awful. There are shock blanket's an' the paramedics all look around the house like it's the scene from a horror movie. The police just seem surprised someone in the house called the cops at all.

 

Micky can feel the anger buildin' in his chest. They take Terry away, an' they fuss over him say he's probably concussed. Want to take him in, but he won't go despite the sad puppy looks that Ian shoots his way.

 

It's not Ians fault, not really. Mickey the one that broke the rules.

 

He avoids Ian for a week, shoots up the abandoned building an' goes up to see his dad. Terry looks at him like he's something he lifted from the back of a truck and is trying to decide is worth sellin'

 

“Yer in shape but not that good.” Terry barks at Mickey without preamble. .

 

Mickey doesn't say anything just meets his father's gaze. Frozen. He knows exactly what his partner is talking about.

 

“Mutant?” Terry asks.

 

Mickey nods jerkily.

 

“Hmph...” Terry seems to be thinking something over. “That we can work with. The other thing you'll have to fix. No son of mine's gonna be a fag.”

 

Mickey nods again, just as jerkily.

 

Terry leans back away from the window. He seems satisfied.

 

Mickey feels sick and scared but he's trapped and he can't be nothing but what he already is. He ain't like Lip or Ian who could live somewhere else. He's a Milkovich and he's been fucked since the day he was born but take him out of his natural goddamn habitat and he will fuckin' die.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realized that if there was one moment where having superpowers would have made a big difference it was in THAT scene in 3x06. And who wouldn't want to write a version where they're saved from some of what happens?


	4. Lost Lip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lip finds out about the mutations.

Lip learns his brother is a mutant from Mickey fucking Milkovich of all damn people.

 

It's during the period where Ian's on a downswing and won't get out of bed or move or talk to anyone except to occasionally yell at someone to go away.

 

They're sitting on the couch at the Milkoviches when Mickey drops the bomb.

 

“I mean ain't nothin' to be done is there? Can't afford the good care. No way in hell I'm droppin' him with the state, you know, what with him being what he is an' all..” Mickey snarls as he lights up a cigarette.

 

Lip wants to throtle him. “I know you're Dad probably left you with a skewed view of how the world works but it's not like they'll think he's crazier for being gay!”

 

Mickey looks at him like he's stupid. Mickey looks at Lip that way far too often as far as Lip is concerned.

 

“You're shitting me right? Sure, gay ain't much, an' you Gallagher got some sort of good luck charm on ya, and I know he can't get hurt man but like, the state does shady shit to the mutants they get their hands on.”

 

Lip drops his can of beer.

 

Mickey freezes and stares at him. “You seriously didn't know?”

 

“NO.” Fiona snarls from across the room.

 

Mickey stubs his cigarette out on the ashtray with a shaking hand. “Huh.”

 

Lip makes eye contact with Fiona and sits down across from Mickey, trying not to touch anything if they can help it.

 

“Do you think the mutation has any-” Fiona starts but Mickey snort of derision is so loud and sudden she doesn't even finish the sentence.

 

“Ain't my business but No. Won't have said anything if I didn't think you'd know.” and there's a sneer to those words, recrimination that they'd failed Ian. That they should have known about his mutation, about where he was for 6 months, about the fact that he was getting sick. They should have known a lot of things.

 

They beg and plead but Mickey won't say another word, and they know it's in vain. The only person on record to have successfully gotten Mickey to do anything when his mind's made up not to is currently unable to get out of bed.

 

Finally, Mickey yells. “FUCK IT!” and picks Lip up with one hand and Fiona with the other and physically throws them out the door, before slamming it in their faces.

 

Fiona looks at Lip, and Lip looks at Fiona.

 

“Guess Ian's not the only one who's a Mutant.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is short. Sorry. It's also the last bit I have written for this verse. Sorry, again.

**Author's Note:**

> So this has been sitting in my drive for ages. I wanted initially to make it a full story but I kind of feel like the point is that having special powers doesn't actually really change much for these guys, it just paints another target on their backs. 
> 
> Also, it's fun when people have shitty powers since x-men canon says that's what most mutants end up with.


End file.
